Just Another Superhero Story
The Death of Superboy
Before Superboy’s mangled wet corpse was found on Pier 39 in San Francisco, we weren’t sure that superheroes could actually die. Officer Gomez was first to the crime scene and initially assumed that the corpse was of some fan who had taken the cosplay a bit too far.
But when Beast Soldier, the centaur hero, galloped onto the scene and began to roar in anger upon inspecting the body, Officer Gomez and the nearby onlookers knew that their worst fears had been confirmed.
There was a sort of cognitive dissonance in the days that followed Superboy’s death. As always, government leaders assured their citizens that there was absolutely, positively nothing to worry about. Meanwhile, Razor Woman, the leader of the League of Superheroes, projected her usual stoic calm, assuring the world that there was no evidence of any sort of foul play.
“As we’ve always said,” Razor Woman said to close her speech. “We superheroes are not immortal. Like you all, we can die of natural causes just like our Superboy did.”
Razor Woman paused. “Nevertheless, we are still invincible.”
And then, Razor Woman let out a smile showing her bladelike teeth - a gesture that infused confidence in so many of us given that those blades had always and forever been on the side of humanity.
Maybe if it weren’t for that smile, we would have seen just how problematic Superboy’s supposedly natural death was.
For one, many of us had a hard time envisioning a natural death that resulted in a missing nose, a smashed leg, and a gnawed hand. Also, Superboy had died at the age of 1500, well short of the 10,000-year lifespan that superheroes normally had.
Yet in spite of all these inconsistencies, most of us bought the mainstream, normie narrative surrounding Superboy’s death. It’s hard not to believe in superhero invincibility when you or someone you know has seen these superheroes in the flesh.
Thousands of New Yorkers were in Central Park when Beast Soldier - in one thunderous punch to the gut - ripped a hole in the gargantuan Rat King’s stomach causing the monster to stumble around spilling rat guts in what seemed like every corner of the park until finally collapsing in the Hudson. To this day, Central Park hasn’t re-opened.
Even more people were witness to the Spartan’s victory over the Great Hydra, a multi-headed beast the size of five basketball stadiums stacked on top of each other.
The Spartan was inarguably the most powerful of the superheroes, in no small part due to his indestructible javelin which he held with such ease that he often said he would first cut off an arm before yielding his weapon.
All of the Spartan’s strength was hypothetical of course, given that no one had seen the Spartan engage in combat up until his battle with the Great Hydra.
By the time the Spartan arrived in the port city of Dubrovnik in Croatia, the Great Hydra had already capsized most of the NATO battleships and had devoured all of its submarines. What remained of the NATO fleet were its aircraft carriers which were engaged in a tactical retreat while its fighter jets flew around the Great Hydra in vain.
But when the Great Hydra saw a figure dashing towards Dubrovnik from the surrounding hills, the beast’s eyes grew wide at seeing the infamous blood-red glint of the figure’s javelin, made red long ago from the blood of the Spartan’s enemies. Stumbling away in terror, the beast dove deep into the Aegean, never to be seen again.
And so it came to be that up until and even after the battle with the Great Hydra, no living human had seen the Spartan engage in any sort of combat.
This is all to say that the superheros’ one-sided dominance of Earth’s monsters made it easy to attribute Superboys’ death to natural causes. And over time, that’s exactly what most of us did.
Operation Spearhead
Despite the normalcy that returned to the world in the weeks following Superboy’s death, there were a few lingering oddities.
For one, people noticed that superheroes began appearing exclusively in trios. Officially, this change was made to minimize civilian casualties - after all, monsters could be dealt with more quickly with three superheroes. But in the fringes of the internet, people began to whisper that perhaps these were new precautions that the League of Superheroes was taking after the death of Superboy.
The second major change came with Operation Spearhead. Traditionally, superheroes would react to monster attacks in the same way that police officers would respond to an emergency call. But with Operation Spearhead, Razor Woman announced, the superheroes would be taking the fight to the monsters.
“While it’s simply impossible that any monster would have been powerful enough to defeat Superboy,” Razor Woman explained. “It’s important to defeat the monsters on their own turf, in case they have been emboldened by Superboy’s untimely death.”
Razor Woman hadn’t given any indication of when or where Operation Spearhead would start, so it was much to the surprise of Adib and his fellow Saharan Bedouins when they saw in the distance, three small figures dashing towards the fortress of the scorpion men, monsters akin to centaurs in that their upper bodies resembled a human’s while their lower bodies had the anatomy of a scorpion.
The scorpion men rushed out of their citadel in a two-row phalanx. The first row of scorpion men stood ready for hand-to-pincer combat while the second row used their tails to launch thick streams of poisonous liquid at the oncoming superheroes.
Razor Woman, with daggers protruding from each finger, gracefully glided past these streams of poison as though she were a dancer performing a set piece. Black Magic, meanwhile, issued an ancient incantation that turned all the oncoming poison into a cool mist once it came into his vicinity. And the Student, with just paper and pencil in hand, casually jogged behind Black Magic.
It goes without saying that none of the scorpion men survived the battle. What was surprising to Adib and his friends though, was that the trio of superheroes remained in the fortress for hours after the battle. Adib would later tell reporters that it seemed like the superheroes were looking for something.
Or maybe someone.
The Legend of the First Superhero
Everyone knows there was tension between the superheroes when they first arrived together on Earth. The history books, today’s superheroes, and the stone tablets in museums all tell it the same way.
Most of the superheroes were shocked by all the suffering that they witnessed when they arrived on Earth. Famine, disease, and death stalked the inhabitants of Earth and while these superheroes knew they wouldn’t be able to eradicate suffering altogether, they believed that it was their moral obligation to reduce it by any means necessary.
But not all of the superheroes felt this way. There was a small contingent that strongly advocated for returning back to their home planet instead of remaining on Earth to intervene in human affairs. The First Superhero, the most powerful superhero, was in this minority group.
And so, when a fire broke out on the superheroes’ spaceship rendering it unusable, the tension between the First Superhero’s group and the others escalated into violence. Our oldest sources say that the resulting battle triggered destructive earthquakes and large-scale tsunamis throughout the planet.
At a pivotal point in the battle, Time Lord - a key player in the interventionist group - identified an advantageous timeline in the multiverse that he shifted the universe towards, thus resulting in a narrow victory for his group, which had managed to fully eradicate the opposing group of superheroes.
By the end of the battle, only twelve superheroes remained, which later became today’s League of Superheroes.
All of the superheroes who had died from the battle were buried deep underground in the outback of Australia where their spaceship had first landed - well, all of the superheroes except the First Superhero, that is.
Out of respect for his leadership prior to landing on Earth, the remaining superheroes launched his body into space towards their home planet.
This meant that the First Superhero was the only dead superhero whose body was unaccounted for, and this naturally provided perfect fodder for the conspiratorial types on Earth.
Some fringe religious cults believed that the First Superhero would return to Earth again when the superheroes needed him the most. Others, meanwhile, were convinced that the First Superhero would eventually return alongside fire and brimstone to exact revenge on the League of Superheroes and its human collaborators.
After the death of Superboy, the legend of the First Superhero, once largely forgotten, began to fill in the gaps for the many questions that humanity now had.
Who were the superheroes searching for in their unprecedented raids on these monster villages?
And if no monster or human could kill Superboy, then what sort of being could?
The Massacre at the Gobi
A year after the announcement of Operation Spearhead, the world was experiencing an unprecedented wave of peace, largely thanks to the offensive maneuvers made by the superheroes. The initial attack on the scorpion men’s citadel was followed by Beast Soldier’s expedition into the Grand Canyon, deep into the domain of Lord Golem, the most feared monster in North America. Afterward, the Knight commandeered an assault on the feared Minotaur fortress on the island of Crete, which had been the jumping-off point for the Minotaurs’ destructive incursions onto the Greek mainland.
These attacks - and the others that followed them - cowed the remaining monsters into submission, given all of the destruction that the superheroes left in their wake. For a while, it seemed like humanity would enter a golden era of growth and prosperity, unmarred by vicious random attacks by monsters.
Yet, the superheroes themselves seemed unsatisfied with their victories. As Razor Woman, Black Magic, and the Student had done in the Sahara, each victory was followed by an intensive search through the remains of the monster community. And after each search, the superheroes’ faces would betray hints of dissatisfaction, as though they had won the battle but lost the war.
The last assault of Operation Spearhead was witnessed by Selenge and her fellow Mongolian falconers who were high in the windswept hills of the Gobi when they saw dozens of sand dragons on the horizon swarming towards a stationary trio - namely, Black Magic, Earth Boy, and Colossus.
As the sand dragons raced towards the superheroes, Black Magic began to mutter a spell, Colossus unsheathed his fifteen-foot adamantium axe, and Earth Boy drew out a dozen large boulders from beneath the sand with a flick of the wrist.
Many of us have heard this sort of story before, which would go something like this: pieces of sand dragon raining down from the sky, superheroes coming away unscathed, and human bystanders standing to the side picking their noses.
But what happened instead at the battle - just as the sand dragons were about to make contact - was a flash of blinding white light. The falcons, previously resting on their falconers’ wrists, screeched and flew away in distress. Selenge and the other falconers, meanwhile, fell to the floor covering their eyes, blinded with pain from the bright lights.
By the time the falconers recovered several minutes later, they were astonished at the scene below. Severed dragon heads lay strewn across the battlefield while bodies lay convulsing nearby, oozing blood from their recently severed necks.
But what was most shocking was the state of the three superheroes. Earth Boy’s limp body lay crushed under a massive boulder and Black Magic was burnt to a crisp. Colossus, meanwhile, a twenty-foot giant made of gold, was dripping gallons of gold-colored blood as he stumbled around attempting to remove the adamantium axe embedded deep into his chest.
While the other falconers were too shocked to even move, Selenge ran over to help the wounded superhero.
“Hold on, sir, we’re going to call for help,” Selenge said, attempting to project calm when she arrived at Colossus’ side.
Colossus shook his head and suddenly fell to his knees. As Selenge burst into tears, Colossus took a deep shaky breath and before collapsing dead, gasped his last words:
“Tell the others… our old friend is back.”
The Return of the First Superhero
The Massacre at the Gobi was so shocking that it left us all numb. The next day, hardly anyone went to work or even got out of bed for that matter. After all, what was the point?
At any moment now, we were subject to being slaughtered by the First Superhero and there was absolutely nothing that the League of Superheroes could do about it. For the first time since the superheroes arrived thousands of years ago, humanity felt truly and utterly helpless.
But when we opened the notification signaling the start of a League of Superheroes live stream, we were astonished to see Razor Woman flanked by the seven other remaining superheroes in the League: the Spartan, Time Lord, Huntress, Warlock, Knight, Lumberjack, and the Student.
Never before, since their arrival on Earth, had all the superheroes been seen together in the same location. And now, with their united presence, the League of Superheroes’ message was subtle, yet clear. The First Superhero had defeated the superheroes individually and even in small groups, but a united League of Superheroes had defeated him thousands of years ago.
And it would do so again.
But as Razor Woman walked across the podium to the mic stand, there was a blinding flash of white light that covered our live streams for what couldn’t have been longer than two seconds. When the stream came back online, a middle-aged Asian man dressed in scrubs was at the podium.
We were all shocked to see a suburban dad in his mid-forties at the center of a global live stream, but when the superheroes unsheathed their weapons and cautiously positioned themselves around the man at the podium, we all began to realize that the middle-aged dad must have been the First Superhero.
“Planet Earth,” the First Superhero began in a strong, clear voice. “Today I am here to tell you the truth. And to free you from my kind -”
But before the First Superhero could continue, Razor Woman slid her blade over the mic cord.
“Spartan, I need you at Time Lord’s side,” Razor Woman yelled. “Lumberjack, Student, and Knight, come with me.”
Then, she lunged towards the First Superhero twirling her dual broadswords at a dizzying speed. Immediately behind her were both the Lumberjack with his Great Axe in hand and Knight who was charging forward with his mechanized steed which also carried the Student who was frantically scribbling into his journal.
Time Lord, meanwhile, took a deep breath and exhaled. Then, he sat down and closed his eyes.
With Time Lord’s ability to manage the multiverse, Time Lord was perhaps the League’s most unique weapon. With the snap of his fingers, Time Lord could navigate the present timeline to advantageous futures, provided that the nearby futures were logically consistent with the present. This also meant that Time Lord was severely overweight, given his propensity to navigate himself towards timelines that involved meals at all-you-can-eat buffets.
With Knight, Lumberjack, the Student, and Razor Woman attacking and the rest of the superheroes positioning themselves to protect Time Lord, it was clear that the League intended to defeat the First Superhero in the same way they had thousands of years ago - by relying heavily on Time Lord’s powers.
But before Razor Woman could reach the First Superhero, he disappeared into a blur and propelled both the charging Lumberjack and Knight into the whirling dervish that was Razor Woman. The resulting clash of blades, ax, and horse left the Knight and Lumberjack bleeding out on the ground. The Student, however, had jumped off the Knight’s steed just in time and was in the middle of running away from the battle until the First Superhero methodically sliced the Student in half with a karate chop.
Undeterred, Razor Woman again launched herself towards the direction of the First Superhero who was now looking down regretfully at the Student’s corpse. Meanwhile, Beast Soldier, Warlock, and Huntress stood carefully behind Razor Woman, keen on avoiding the whirling blades that had unwittingly killed Knight and Lumberjack.
“You’ve been gone thousands of years only to come back to murder your brethren!?” Razor Woman screamed as she spun herself into a tornado of blades, a tornado that had been the death of thousands of monsters.
The First Superhero seemed perplexed, as though wondering how to deal with Razor Woman’s special form. Many of us watching the live stream couldn’t help but ask ourselves if the First Superhero's early success had merely been due to the element of surprise.
As if to answer that question, the First Superhero removed his glasses, revealing green laser beams which burst straight from his eyes, vaporizing Razor Woman instantaneously.
The First Superhero wasted no time firing off another laser beam at the still-meditating Time Lord, but this time, the beam was absorbed by a lunging Warlock whose ancient staff absorbed the laser’s energy. Undeterred, the First Superhero put his glasses back on and ran towards Time Lord.
In response to the First Superhero’s charge, Huntress let loose a rapid-fire barrage of arcane arrows. Despite this, the First Superhero continued to move forward as he dodged the arrows with the casualness of a child avoiding cracks on the sidewalk.
Gritting her teeth, Huntress whispered to Warlock. “Now.”
Warlock raised his staff and muttered an incantation, causing the Huntress’ arrows to explode mid-flight as they flew right by the First Superhero. The arcane damage from these explosions seemed to bother the First Superhero, causing him to retreat out of range of Huntress’ arrows.
The Spartan, meanwhile, grumbled at having been tasked with guard duty over the meditating Time Lord. He was perhaps the only superhero not in complete awe of the First Superhero’s powers and maybe the only superhero who believed he could defeat the First Superhero in a solo duel. Yet, despite his frustration, the Spartan was a man who followed orders, so he dutifully remained at Time Lord’s side.
With only five superheroes remaining - Beast Soldier, Huntress, Warlock, Time Lord, and the Spartan - it seemed like the fate of the League of Superheroes was sealed, given the First Superhero’s near invincibility. But then, Time Lord let out a triumphant cry.
He had found the timeline he was looking for.
In response, the First Superhero began to charge toward Time Lord once more, but it was too late - Time Lord raised his right hand and snapped.
Instantaneously, the First Superhero froze mid-run. Somehow, Time Lord had found a timeline in the multiverse in which the First Superhero remained completely and utterly frozen just as he was about to attack the remaining superheroes.
Immediately, Huntress, Warlock, and Beast Soldier launched their attacks at their now-stationary enemy. Huntress unleashed a flurry of six arrows and muttered a spell, causing each arrow to morph into a powerful red beam of energy. Warlock pointed his staff to the heavens, unleashing a large cylindrical column of blue flames which burst continuously from the sky directly onto the now-frozen First Superhero.
Huntress’ attacks landed directly on the First Superhero, causing the First Superhero to collapse on the ground bleeding from six large circular wounds. Immediately afterward, Warlock’s fire attack landed, torching the First Superhero in a stream of continuous flame.
With the momentum on their side, Beast Soldier beat his chest and let out a primal roar, morphing from a centaur into a twenty-foot armored bear wielding a massive mace in each hand. With astonishing speed, Beast Soldier charged towards the First Superhero, ready to finish off whatever remained of their old leader.
“It is over,” Beast Soldier yelled out to the others as he moved closer to the First Superhero’s lifeless body.
Thousands of years ago, Beast Soldier had kept his mouth shut when the others had advocated for an honorary burial for the First Superhero, their defeated enemy. He knew that something had felt off about sending that body to space, no matter how cold the corpse was to the touch. This time though, Beast Soldier intended to take matters into his own hands.
“This is for all the others,” Beast Soldier grunted as he swung both maces towards the First Superhero’s corpse.
Warlock and Huntress, meanwhile, were walking back towards the Spartan and Time Lord to debrief. Time Lord lay on the ground exhausted from the timeline shift while the Spartan paced around aimlessly, clearly disappointed that he wouldn’t have the chance to clash with his old nemesis.
“I wonder why, after all these years, he decided to come back? And how did he come back anyways? We must have sent his body to the other side of the Universe,” Warlock mused.
Huntress shrugged. “We might never kn-”
The conversation between Huntress and Warlock was interrupted by Beast Soldier’s two maces which came flying across the battlefield, lodging themselves deep in the skulls of Huntress and Warlock.
And walking slowly across the field was a burnt and injured - but very much alive - First Superhero whose body was now covered in Beast Soldier’s blood.
“And then there were two,” the First Superhero muttered as he spat out blood.
The Spartan let out a battle cry that sounded almost joyful, given that he would finally meet his match. Then, to Time Lord, the Spartan said, “Stay out of this - a fair fight is all I’ve ever wanted after all these years.”
Time Lord, however, was deep in meditation once more. While he didn’t have the energy to navigate to another timeline, he was still able to scan the present timeline to see if there was any wisdom he could impart to the Spartan.
Suddenly, Time Lord opened his eyes. “Spartan, I don’t know how to tell you this…”
“You must say it now, the enemy approaches.”
Time Lord gulped. “We’re in the timeline where you don’t even get to fight the First Superhero. He ends up coming behind you and -”
The Spartan lifted the tip of his javelin to Time Lord’s pudgy neck. “You find the timeline where the First Superhero and I have a glorious battle, or I end yours.”
But before Time Lord could respond, the First Superhero plunged one of Huntress’ arrows through the back of the Spartan’s neck. Before the Spartan could even turn around, the First Superhero elbowed him in the spine, causing the Spartan to sprawl on the ground, slowly choking to death on his own blood.
Free from the Spartan’s grip, Time Lord snapped his fingers and used the last of his energy to transfer to a timeline where he was several hundred feet away from the battle scene.
If I could just somehow find enough time to properly search for the right timeline, then maybe just maybe - these were Time Lord’s last thoughts before being vaporized by the First Superhero whose lasers had found Time Lord from far away.
With Time Lord’s demise, the thousand-year reign of the League of Superheroes had come to a bloody end, a demise that humanity collectively watched with mouths agape.
Walking back to the podium where he first made an appearance, the First Superhero began to speak to the world.
“Humanity,” he began. “I understand there is much fear in your hearts after witnessing all this.”
“I hope you eventually will understand that the superheroes were holding you back this whole time.” The First Superhero paused as if weighing what to say next. “When you think about it, you never really needed them anyways.”
Then, the First Superhero burst into space, never to return again.
The End
With the First Superhero’s departure, we were back where we started thousands of years ago. We were once again subject to the whims of monster attacks and natural disasters, without the ability to lean on superheroes for support.
Initially, most of us lamented the loss of human life that would result from the lack of superheroes on Earth. But over time, some interesting developments emerged.
For one, nation-states began to send emissaries to the major monster communities to negotiate non-aggression pacts. This attempt at diplomacy was surprisingly well-received.
It turns out that for thousands of years, the monsters had been sending their own diplomats to human cities in an attempt to negotiate peace, only to be killed by superheroes. The monsters had finally given up after sending to New York City their top diplomat Rat King whose overtures for peace were met with a fatal punch to his stomach.
And so, as time went on, more of us began to think that maybe the First Superhero was right. Superheroes were boring agents of the status quo. Their victories, no matter how spectacular, would never result in meaningful change that would push humanity to new heights.
Their victories over monsters would only ever result in a temporary return to normalcy - however flawed that normalcy might be.
But thanks to the First Superhero, people like Officer Gomez, Adib, and Selenge could once again be agents of change, rather than side characters in their own world.
Perhaps, with a little bit of luck, humanity would even make the world a better place.